U.S. Courts Halt Deportation of Subramanyam Vedam

Two U.S. courts have ordered immigration officials to halt the deportation of Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, a 64-year-old legal permanent resident who spent more than four decades in prison before his murder conviction was overturned. Vedam, who was brought to the U.S. as an infant and grew up in State College where his father taught at Penn State, was released from state prison on Oct. 3 and immediately taken into ICE custody at a short-term facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, that has an airstrip for deportations. An immigration judge stayed his deportation pending whether the Board of Immigration Appeals will review the case, and lawyers also secured a separate stay from a U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania. ICE says it seeks to deport Vedam over a decades-old no-contest plea to LSD delivery from when he was about 20, and the Department of Homeland Security has said the overturned murder conviction does not negate the drug conviction. Vedam’s family and lawyers say the roughly 43 years he wrongly spent in prison, during which he earned degrees and tutored fellow inmates, should weigh against deportation as his case proceeds.